Hello to all.
This is Jim Ringler calling in from Haiti. Things are well. On Saturday we joined Greg (Golladay) at Double Harvest Mission. Conditions are much better from a personal standpoint. We are continuing to see a fair degree of injuries as a result of the earthquake. The capabilities interestingly are much better at Double Harvest than they were at the University Hospital.
Greg has done an amazing job of developing an organization and some coordination on the treatment side of these patients, so it is really a nice change to see. We are hoping that we can ferry some more supplies down here. The capabilities of this place are so much better than the other that I think it allows us to push the envelope with regard to what kind of services we are offering. Certainly it would be helpful for people to start working on the ability to get some Size 9 and 10 either Syntheses or MDM nails both femur and tibia that could come down. Certainly small fragment instrumentation if a rod could be utilized. We are thinking a bean bag would be good to help position patients. Ultimately at this point we don’t have x-ray and therefore a C-arm would be very helpful mainly an OVC mini C-arm if that could be commandeered at some point along the way.
The other interesting thing that we hear is that nursing is in high demand and so I think over the course of the next week or so clearly trying to identify some nurses, namely operative room and scrub tech nurses that can come down to assist in the operating room would be helpful.
Again, all is well. Everybody is doing well. We can be reached on our e-mail probably the easiest way, or we will try and check in perhaps later today. This is as of 7:00 a.m. Sunday morning. We wish the best of everybody back home.
James R. Ringler, M.D.
